


Empire and Liberty

by sour



Series: Aristocrastuck [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blatant anachronisms, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-10-13
Updated: 2011-10-13
Packaged: 2017-10-24 13:56:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/264214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sour/pseuds/sour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Concerning a new species, an inheritance, technology and knowledge that no one should have, and something completely alien about the way these trolls do anything at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empire and Liberty

**Author's Note:**

> I like Downton Abbey. Please let me know if there's anything I get very wrong. More to come—and it will be less densely narrated, I promise

In her youth the Countess Lalonde of Regenshire was beautiful, disdainful, and known to take what were politely termed “liberties” and worse in worse company—a captivating woman born into wealth but yet unmarried, and discussed in hushed tones, as if the lady in her manor had ears in the Hunk’s Rump not less than a mile off and would at any moment stumble into the commoners’ tavern and take a poor man’s head off with the edge of her tongue. Most widely known (and most boldly said) was her fondness for drink; she found this one of her vices difficult to hide, especially from the girls who received their wages washing the stemware. Many men are brilliant drunks. A woman is not, whether by dint of her natural tendency to maternal affection or of her wholehearted devotion to her husband and his title. A woman may be equal to man in the strength of her liver, but never is she equal to man in grey matter. A woman’s intelligence doused with merlot cannot contemplate much more than merlot. There is no need to prove it through methodical study or psychoanalysis. The evidence is biologically clear.

Less clear in the public eye was the lady’s accomplishment in creating our current alliance with the grey populace of Alternia. Widely credited toward Captain Harley, a loud and lively man with a loud and lively gun, her text on this _terra insolita_ was published and it was his name first on the cover, his appearance requested in the forum, and his speeches at the universities. Nothing ill should be said of Harley. It was her idea that he should step forward with the suggestion that, for the mutual good of two intelligent species, war is out. He was strange and ridiculous, but he had his equipment, and so Earth, for one, prepared itself to welcome its new insect compatriots. The rest should not need exposition.

The Countess Lalonde is respected, but she is not liked. While rich women are prosperous, she is miserly. Where mothers are nurturing, she makes dispassionate donations. Where single women are dull, though, she is objectively interesting, and while it is known that Old Scratch’s Ontological Paradoxifier requires, at minimum, one party's genetic stock, it is also well known that the single resulting infant becomes a cloned duplicate. This was not the case. The child’s contradicting features had gone largely ignored—thicker brows, unrulier hair, and this all may be down to mutation but for the impossibility of that failure; two genetic contributors, though, necessarily end in two infants, and the Countess Lalonde long hid from the world the identity of my brother.

She did not desire children; she desired mastery over alien technology and proof that would make facts of her hypotheses. She did not desire Strider, but she coveted his chromosomes. She made no claims to want the male half of her experiment’s aftermath, and I don’t believe she ever wanted me. At the very least she could have offered some warning or information, for—I will not censor myself—I found my counterpart in the ectobiological son of the red-eyed bard, and I believe he in me, and familiarity compels attraction in most cases; in ours, a protective attachment with no English name. The Trolls have a word for it. Indeed they consider it a component of their strange multifaceted romance, and were I not romantically inclined toward the periwinkle I might have been prompted toward the sword; I rather suspect similar of my companion, for not a few times have I observed him scrutinizing the occasional scabbard. He thinks he is subtle.

I endeavor only to give as accurate an impression of my mother as is necessary for the events that succeeded my coming of age. I can only hope that our alliance with Alternia and the subsequent union of our peoples will leave my reputation in less disgrace than I fully expect.

 

[From the absolutely private journal of Lady Rose Lalonde of Regenshire]


End file.
